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The Toilers of the Field
A collection of articles which first appeared in Fraser's Magazine and Longman's Magazine published posthumously in book form in 1892.
324 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1892
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About the author
Richard Jefferies
367 books58 followers(John) Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) is best known for his prolific and sensitive writing on natural history, rural life and agriculture in late Victorian England. However, a closer examination of his career reveals a many-sided author who was something of an enigma. To some people he is more familiar as the author of the children’s classic Bevis or the strange futuristic fantasy After London, while he also has some reputation as a mystic worthy of serious study. Since his death his books have enjoyed intermittent spells of popularity, but today he is unknown to the greater part of the reading public. Jefferies, however, has been an inspiration to a number of more prominent writers and W.H. Hudson, Edward Thomas, Henry Williamson and John Fowles are among those who have acknowledged their debt to him. In my view his greatest achievement lies in his expression, aesthetically and spiritually, of the human encounter with the natural world – something that became almost an obsession for him in his last years.
He was born at Coate in the north Wiltshire countryside - now on the outskirts of Swindon - where his family farmed a smallholding of about forty acres. His father was a thoughtful man with a passionate love of nature but was unsuccessful as a farmer, with the result that the later years of Jefferies' childhood were spent in a household increasingly threatened by poverty. There were also, it seems, other tensions in the family. Richard’s mother, who had been brought up in London, never settled into a life in the country and the portrait of her as Mrs Iden - usually regarded as an accurate one - in his last novel, Amaryllis at the Fair, is anything but flattering. Remarks made in some of Jefferies’ childhood letters to his aunt also strongly suggest an absence of mutual affection and understanding between mother and son. A combination of an unsettled home life and an early romantic desire for adventure led him at the age of sixteen to leave home with the intention of traversing Europe as far as Moscow. In this escapade he was accompanied by a cousin, but the journey was abandoned soon after they reached France. On their return to England they attempted to board a ship for the United States but this plan also came to nothing when they found themselves without sufficient money to pay for food.
A self-absorbed and independent youth, Jefferies spent much of his time walking through the countryside around Coate and along the wide chalk expanses of the Marlborough Downs. He regularly visited Burderop woods and Liddington Hill near his home and on longer trips explored Savernake Forest and the stretch of the downs to the east, where the famous white horse is engraved in the hillside above Uffington. His favourite haunt was Liddington Hill, a height crowned with an ancient fort commanding superb views of the north Wiltshire plain and the downs. It was on the summit of Liddington at the age of about eighteen, as he relates in The Story of My Heart, that his unusual sensitivity to nature began to induce in him a powerful inner awakening - a desire for a larger existence or reality which he termed 'soul life'. Wherever he went in the countryside he found himself in awe of the beauty and tranquility of the natural world; not only the trees, flowers and animals, but also the sun, the stars and the entire cosmos seemed to him to be filled with an inexpressible sense of magic and meaning.
He was born at Coate in the north Wiltshire countryside - now on the outskirts of Swindon - where his family farmed a smallholding of about forty acres. His father was a thoughtful man with a passionate love of nature but was unsuccessful as a farmer, with the result that the later years of Jefferies' childhood were spent in a household increasingly threatened by poverty. There were also, it seems, other tensions in the family. Richard’s mother, who had been brought up in London, never settled into a life in the country and the portrait of her as Mrs Iden - usually regarded as an accurate one - in his last novel, Amaryllis at the Fair, is anything but flattering. Remarks made in some of Jefferies’ childhood letters to his aunt also strongly suggest an absence of mutual affection and understanding between mother and son. A combination of an unsettled home life and an early romantic desire for adventure led him at the age of sixteen to leave home with the intention of traversing Europe as far as Moscow. In this escapade he was accompanied by a cousin, but the journey was abandoned soon after they reached France. On their return to England they attempted to board a ship for the United States but this plan also came to nothing when they found themselves without sufficient money to pay for food.
A self-absorbed and independent youth, Jefferies spent much of his time walking through the countryside around Coate and along the wide chalk expanses of the Marlborough Downs. He regularly visited Burderop woods and Liddington Hill near his home and on longer trips explored Savernake Forest and the stretch of the downs to the east, where the famous white horse is engraved in the hillside above Uffington. His favourite haunt was Liddington Hill, a height crowned with an ancient fort commanding superb views of the north Wiltshire plain and the downs. It was on the summit of Liddington at the age of about eighteen, as he relates in The Story of My Heart, that his unusual sensitivity to nature began to induce in him a powerful inner awakening - a desire for a larger existence or reality which he termed 'soul life'. Wherever he went in the countryside he found himself in awe of the beauty and tranquility of the natural world; not only the trees, flowers and animals, but also the sun, the stars and the entire cosmos seemed to him to be filled with an inexpressible sense of magic and meaning.
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August 2, 2014
A wonderful book published after Jefferies death but made up of his thoughts and also of some of his letters to the Times in the 1870's and early 1880's. The first (and greatest) part of the book is taken up with observations on the life of agricultural labourers, men and women, their work, their habitations and their morals, and including a couple of fictional set pieces, which are designed to be a true reflection in generality of typical labourers. There is a section on the farmer himself (employer of the agricultural worker) and some letters to the Times in which he refutes arguments (unseen) sent into the Times which obviously paint the farmer in a scurrilous light.
The book is still very readable today, despite the shift in attitudes from those of the Victorian's in general. This is because Jefferies does not either patronise his subjects by treating them as charity cases with whose plight he is benevolently bringing to the attention of the public, neither does he portray them in an idealistic and romantic vein. Painters of the period heavily romanticised the idea of rural England with bucolic scenes of rosy cheeked children at play in fields or talking to a wise old grandfather in the lane. They painted idyllic cottages, which would have been far from the two-room, crowded and dirty homes of the average agricultural worker. Children and adults alike were painted as well-nourished individuals, dressed in clean and tidy clothes and obviously happy with their station in life. Here though, Jefferies talks about the hard life of the agricultural worker. Men had to rise early and work until night time in all weathers and with all manners of dirty and heavy work. Women produced large families and had all the heavy domestic chores to do and still go out and work in the fields to spend back breaking hours bending over the fields working. Children, as soon as they were old enough would be set to look after their younger siblings while their mother was in the fields, and to fetch water and make sure there was a fire going and water boiling ready for the return of the adults. Children as young as six or seven were sent out in the fields as workers also, bird scaring and gleaning.
Jefferies also talks about the men (and occasionally women too) who spent a large portion of what little wages were earned, in the pub. However, rather than censuring the habit, he tries to understand it, and does a fair job. He also touches on domestic abuse, which he thinks is more prevalent in the labouring class, who are used to rough and hard handling.
Jefferies letters to the Times were the only thing that irritated me a little as he argued that farmers were mostly too good to their workers and in their generosity to their employees, almost lived on the breadline themselves. He posited his view that agricultural workers tended to be the most ungrateful despite all the good that is done them by the farmer and landlord. This tends to contradict a little what had been said before about the agricultural worker, but can be understood to a degree as Jefferies came from a farming family and the examples he uses tend to be from his own immediate area therefore he would naturally be biased.
The second part of the book is Jefferies nature observations and a final and delightful sketch on the lions of Trafalgar Square. These are lovely pieces of prose work which although short, would be of interest to any lover of nature writing.
The book is still very readable today, despite the shift in attitudes from those of the Victorian's in general. This is because Jefferies does not either patronise his subjects by treating them as charity cases with whose plight he is benevolently bringing to the attention of the public, neither does he portray them in an idealistic and romantic vein. Painters of the period heavily romanticised the idea of rural England with bucolic scenes of rosy cheeked children at play in fields or talking to a wise old grandfather in the lane. They painted idyllic cottages, which would have been far from the two-room, crowded and dirty homes of the average agricultural worker. Children and adults alike were painted as well-nourished individuals, dressed in clean and tidy clothes and obviously happy with their station in life. Here though, Jefferies talks about the hard life of the agricultural worker. Men had to rise early and work until night time in all weathers and with all manners of dirty and heavy work. Women produced large families and had all the heavy domestic chores to do and still go out and work in the fields to spend back breaking hours bending over the fields working. Children, as soon as they were old enough would be set to look after their younger siblings while their mother was in the fields, and to fetch water and make sure there was a fire going and water boiling ready for the return of the adults. Children as young as six or seven were sent out in the fields as workers also, bird scaring and gleaning.
Jefferies also talks about the men (and occasionally women too) who spent a large portion of what little wages were earned, in the pub. However, rather than censuring the habit, he tries to understand it, and does a fair job. He also touches on domestic abuse, which he thinks is more prevalent in the labouring class, who are used to rough and hard handling.
Jefferies letters to the Times were the only thing that irritated me a little as he argued that farmers were mostly too good to their workers and in their generosity to their employees, almost lived on the breadline themselves. He posited his view that agricultural workers tended to be the most ungrateful despite all the good that is done them by the farmer and landlord. This tends to contradict a little what had been said before about the agricultural worker, but can be understood to a degree as Jefferies came from a farming family and the examples he uses tend to be from his own immediate area therefore he would naturally be biased.
The second part of the book is Jefferies nature observations and a final and delightful sketch on the lions of Trafalgar Square. These are lovely pieces of prose work which although short, would be of interest to any lover of nature writing.
Displaying 1 of 1 review